So I’m going to try and explain everything in case I drip feed.
My parents split up when I was 18 and my brother was 16. After a short time my father met a woman who lives in Wales. About two years ago he moved to wales to live with her. My brother and I are both in our 20s and live in the north of England.
We’ve never had the best relationship with our father, especially myself, but things are civil and I do love him.
At Christmas it can be difficult as we have three sets of parents to navigate, both sides of mine and my dps. Last Christmas I travelled down to see my father in Christmas Eve. This is about a three hour journey from where I’m currently living with dp. My mum lives about 45-55 minutes away from us in the opposite direction to my father and we had to travel down there the next day. On Boxing Day we went to dps parents which is another 30 minutes from my mum. Last year in total I ended up driving about 500 miles in three days, and feeling exhausted we told family then that next year we’d have Christmas at ours and not travel. At the time everyone said they were fine with this.
When it came to organising this year I suggest to my dad he could come to us on Christmas Eve but he declined. His partner works for the NHS and the only day of the three she has off is Christmas Eve and they didn’t fancy travelling. That’s fair enough. He suggested coming later in the week and we settled on the 28th.
Was speaking to my brother about this and he said he had agreed to see our dad on the 27th. My brother works in a job which means he lives away from his permanent address (which is with my mother). However on hearing that my father was coming down on the 28th he suggested he just come up on the 28th to ours and we could see each other all together as it’s much less travelling for him. He then has to get to London afterwards, and travelling from mine to London and from my fathers is about the same difference.
He texted my dad who wasn’t happy about this and has responded to my brother saying that neither of us were making any effort and he was disappointed. He stated that he felt neither of us had made any effort for the last two years.
I feel he is being unreasonable. He chose to move to quite a remote location (he’s right in the countryside in Wales, and it is a difficult journey), and last year I drove there and back to see him. I’ve driven down to his probably 3 times this year, but it’s far and he seems to think I should be doing the journey once a month. I have a stressful job which involves a lot of driving during the week, and I like to spend my weekends releaxing, which I don’t feel able to at my dads house. He keeps insisting it is my home too but it definitely doesn’t feel like that.
Am I being a spoilt brat and should make more effort? I don’t feel like I should, but I’m prepared to be told otherwise if I am being unreasonable.